Australia Post set to be emailed into history
Peter Martin Propping up a postal service few Australians need or use is a waste of taxpayers' money.
Entering the post-Australia Post era
Peter Martin When I was young, the postman came twice a day. You could post a letter in the morning and if you were lucky have it delivered across town by the afternoon.
The fee we pay when we don't know we're paying a fee
Peter Martin Imagine being whacked with an annual fee for a service you didn't get. You would want to know about it, right? Apparently we've voted not to.
GPs are the gatekeepers of healthcare
Peter Martin There is something odd about the plan to charge $6 (''the price of two cups of coffee or a Big Mac with a side of fries'') for previously free bulk-billed visits to the doctor.
Don't punish the poor with $6 doctor charge
Peter Martin There's something odd about the plan to charge $6 (''the price of two cups of coffee or a Big Mac with a side of fries'') for previously free bulk-billed visits to the doctor.
Sugar: How sweet it is ... and how bad it is
Peter Martin Let me guess. You're going to lose weight. Let me guess again. You won't succeed for long. The standard approach, the one that almost always fails, is to treat weight as an exercise in accounting.
Big players unlikely to survive unless the dollar drops
Peter Martin What do Holden and Qantas have in common? Here's a clue. It isn't that they are being killed by the carbon tax, although you might think they were.
Bold thinking and low dollar could be saviours to local manufacturing
Peter Martin Australia is a world leader in making high-end gearboxes for rally cars, it has cornered a niche market in rear-view mirrors, its design teams dream up parts of totally foreign-made cars from scratch.
Inequality at the heart of rejection of Gonski program
Peter Martin I get that Christopher Pyne likes private schools. But why take money away from poor schools to give to richer ones?
Mind games could pay handsomely
Peter Martin The Tax Office is set to reveal details of a re-engineering of the way it interacts with the public.
Analysis
Pitfalls of looking for life in the faster lane
Peter Martin Take some time out of your day today to give thanks to the winners of this year's Nobel prize for economics.
Sharemarket chopping and changing does no good
Peter Martin Whether you're standing in a queue at the supermarket, wondering whether to change lanes on the Harbour Bridge or making a big decision such as whether to buy or sell shares, take some time out of...
Sweet assurances set out to deceive
Peter Martin Never take dietary advice from the soft-drink industry. It has form. Remember Coca-Cola's infamous 2009 ''myth-busting'' campaign featuring the actress Kerry Armstrong? It said it was it a myth that...
We're easy to convince when it's our point of view
Peter Martin Ray Hadley holds two apparently contradictory views. On one hand the 2GB jock thinks it's important to tell people what he thinks.
How our mission to cut emissions just got simpler
Peter Martin Firms that easily cut their emissions can clean up by selling their unwanted permits.
Peril amid political porkies
Peter Martin Who are you going to believe? Gillard Labor or Rudd Labor? Or something in between?
We know truth if it pays to be honest
Peter Martin Imagine an election without facts. What if that's where we are heading?
How an Abbott government may run the economy
Peter Martin What would Tony Abbott do? As with all potential prime ministers there's no way to be sure. But thanks to an unusual instance of history repeating, we've been given an unusually clear idea of what...
Analysis
Cuts gathering on horizon if Abbott takes the reins
Peter Martin The age pension is just one of the payments that could face a shake-up under his regime.
It's time to take on the copy cads
Peter Martin Hands up if you like the idea of running chocolate through a 3D printer? Hands up if you wish you had ''invented'' it?
